In the terrorist bombing of a jet aircraft a few years ago, the parents of a young boy from the Midwest were killed. A memorial service was prepared for them but the orphaned boy asked for an addition. He asked that they all pray for those who were responsible for his parents’ deaths, asking God to give the terrorists a change of heart.

That’s forgiveness, to pray for a change of heart in those who injured you. That’s what Jesus is asking his disciples to do. It is true conversion.

Father John Powell, a Jesuit theologian and psychologist, tells us, “Our lives are shaped by those who love us and by those who refuse to love us.”

We all sin; we’re all hurting; we all need forgiveness. And it is through forgiveness that we can become healed.

Sin has been described in contemporary moral theology as “a refusal to love.” Therefore, we are sinners when we refuse to love.

How do we sin by not loving? Are we sinners of commission — doing things we shouldn’t do? Or are we sinners of omission — not doing things we should have done?

We sin by omission when we could have responded in love and did not. When we could have been present for another, when he or she was needing support, comfort or affirmation, we were too busy.

We probably don’t know anybody who is starving or dying of thirst or who is homeless, but we all know people who are starving for affection, who are thirsting for compassion, who need shelter from loneliness. We are often too busy to reach out as we should; and, we, too, need to be forgiven.

So before learning to forgive others, we must first learn to forgive ourselves. What do you do? We have to learn to let go. “Let go and let God” is an expression we’ve all heard at one time or another.

Martin Luther concluded that all we needed was faith in God and we would be redeemed from our sinfulness. We Catholics believe this as well but realize that our faith then motivates us, urges us, as St. Paul says, to do good works. In other words, redeemed people must act like redeemed people.

So, we not only need to forgive ourselves for our failures at loving, we should resolve to do more, to develop a new attitude, to change our behavior.

How can we forgive others? On the cross, having been tortured, taunted and humiliated, Jesus says: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

What about us? How like his is our forgiveness of others?

We could be consumed with anger and hatred toward someone who has wronged us. Understandable? Yes, certainly. But Christian? Certainly not!

When we want those who wrong us to “pay” for what they’ve done, we should instead leave that person to God. Jesus set the example. He forgave those who killed him. He calls us to “Let go and let God.”

One of Jesus’ sayings has to do with how often we should forgive. His disciples ask him, “Tell us teacher, how often should we forgive others: seven times?” Now for the Jews, “seven” represented the perfect number.

So, Jesus followers thought they were really doing something special or being heroic by forgiving seven times. Yet, Jesus responds to his followers – then and now – in this way: “I say to you, you must forgive seventy times seven times!” And Jesus didn’t mean 490 times. He meant we must forgive an infinite number of times. If we wish to be forgiven, we may be called to forgive, every day of our lives.

And we should learn to “forgive” God. At first, the idea of forgiving God may seem strange, perhaps even somewhat blasphemous.

But the idea isn’t new. There’s a whole series of “complaint literature” in the Bible where, for example, the psalmists complain to God about his silence, his seeming non-action on their behalf in the midst of adversity. Over and over again the psalmists ask God, “How long, O Lord, how long, must we wait?” and “Why, O God, why do you let our enemies overcome us?” The book of Job is a powerful and moving response to the question, “Why do good people suffer?” The Book of Job tells us, “People are born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward.” Trouble isn’t a gate-crasher. It has a passkey to every home in the land.

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner wrote his best-selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, at a time when he had to redefine his concept of God because his young son was afflicted with the horribly painful and fatal disease, progeria, the aging disease. He writes:

“The conventional explanation, that God sends us a burden because he knows that we are strong enough to handle it, has it all wrong. Life, not God, sends us the problem. When we try to deal with it we find out that we are not strong. We are weak; we get tired; we get angry, overwhelmed. We begin to wonder how we will ever make it through all the years. But when we reach the limits of our own strength and courage, something unexpected happens. We find reinforcement coming from a source outside of ourselves. And in the knowledge that we are not alone, that God is on our side, we manage to go on.”
But who is this God who is on our side? Whether we’ve reflected on it or not, all of us have some kind of image of God.

For some God is a “divine judge” who rules every aspect of our lives.

For others, God is the “divine Santa Claus” who gives us everything we pray for.

But, I believe, most of us would like God to be a “divine Superman,” that is, a God who saves us in the “nick of time,” who sees that nothing terrible happens to us.

However, the “image” of God that Jesus gave us is God as a loving parent who, just like a loving human parent, can’t always shelter us from life with its pain and suffering, but who is there with us and for us and even suffers along with us.

At the end of his book, with a new image of God, Kushner writes, “In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions.”

For example: Are you capable of forgiving and accepting a world that is not perfect, a world in which there is unfairness and cruelty, disease and crime, earthquakes and accidents? Can you forgive the world’s imperfections and love it because it’s capable of containing great beauty and goodness, and because it’s the only world we have?

Are you capable of forgiving and loving the people around you, even if they’ve hurt you and let you down by not being perfect? Can you forgive them, and love them, anyway, because there aren’t any perfect people around?

And so, are you capable of loving and forgiving God, as Job did, despite the bad things that may happen to you?

And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the powers God has given us to enable us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less than perfect world? Let us pray that each of us can.

Father Cletus M.S. Watson, TOR, is pastor of Crucifixion Parish in Jacksonville. He also is the author of two booklets: “The Concept of God, and the Afro-American” and “Love and the Human Person: An ongoing Perspective.”